The Babylonian armies of King Nebuchadnezzar breached the walls of Jerusalem on the 9th of Tammuz in the year 3338 from creation (423 BCE); King Ziddikiahu of Judah was captured and taken to Babylon (Jeremiah 39:5. A month later, the capture of Jerusalem was completed with the destruction of the Holy Temple and the exile of all but a small number of Jews to Babylon). Tammuz 9 was observed as a fast day until the second breaching of Jerusalem's walls (by the Romans) on the 17th of Tammuz, 3829 (69 CE), at which time the fast was moved to that date. (Talmud, Rosh Hashanah and Tur Orach Chaim 549)
Links:
thethreeweeks.com
The Destruction
Twenty-four wagonloads of Talmudic volumes were publicly burned by Christian church officials in Paris. Many works of Jewish scholarship were forever lost as a result, amd some fast on Friday in the week of Chukat to lament this tragedy.
Link:
Burning the Talmud
Born in Poland in 1905, he became the rabbi of the congregation in Klausenburg, Romania, in 1930. During the Holocaust, he and his family were separated, and he was subjected to forced labor in various camps, tragically losing his wife and nine of his children. He relocated to the United States and established his court in Brooklyn in 1946. He married Chaya Nechama Ungar and fathered seven children. His notable contributions include founding the Kiryat Sanz community in Israel and the Laniado Hospital. Upon his passing in 1994, his sons Zvi Elimelech and Shmuel Dovid assumed leadership of the Sanzer Hasidim in Netanya and Brooklyn, respectively.
Links:
More Than a Donation
Sanz-Klausenburg Rebbetzin Chaya Nechama Halberstam, 96
Louder
For a mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light. (Proverbs 6:23)
Every mitzvah shines its particular light into our world. And there will come a time when you will see that light with your eyes.
Except the candles that are lit for Shabbat before sunset. They shine a light you can see right now.
It may seem an ordinary light, just another flame. But there is nothing ordinary about it.
You have ignited the darkness of our world and extracted its secret:
That it too is light.